The Senate Banking Committee advanced legislation last week that many see as a threat to negotiations between the United States and Iran. TRNN's Thomas Hedges speaks to Jamal Abdi of the Nation Iranian-American Council who says that failed talks could lead to armed conflict.

January312015

Mahdieh Golroo, an Iranian women's rights activist, was released on a bail of 700 million Toman (about $200,000) on January 27. Golroo spent 93 days in prison, following her arrest in front of the Iranian parliament, where she protested the acid attacks against women in Isfahan. She spent 45 days in solitary confinement in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, known for its detainment and torture of political prisoners.

Last October, a wave of acid attacks against women in Isfahan created a public uproar in Iran. Authorities claimed there were four attacks, but social media users counted more than twice as many. When police failed to respond, protests and social media campaigns against government inaction swept the nation.

Golroo appeared on a list of jailed media workers and activists published by Global Voices Advocacy earlier this month. Iranian Internet users have stressed the hypocrisy of jailing an activist who merely protested against an incident the government itself has condemned.

Gissou Nia, the deputy director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, explained in a statement to Global Voices the significance of Golroo's arrest, saying her prosecution is part of a broader effort by the authorities to curtail women's presence in the public sphere.

While it is a welcome development that Mahdieh Golrou is currently out on bail, her legal process is far from over and her prosecution is part of a broader plan perpetrated by Iranian officials to silence women’s voices. Despite vigorous denials from Iranian officials that the acid attacks that Golrou was protesting prior to her arrest were anything but the work of a rogue criminal, these attacks did not take place in a vacuum. Rather, these violent acts came in the midst of systematic policies, rhetoric and legislation from Iranian officials aimed at curtailing women’s participation in the public space. Golrou’s arrest and the arrests just last week of other women activists who dared to question these developments are simply an effort by Iranian officials to suppress those who are unafraid to openly challenge this anti-women trend.

"The response will be firm and decisive.” This, in short, was the Iranian reaction to the Israeli attack in the Syrian province of #Quneitra, which killed a senior commander in the #Iranian_Revolutionary_Guard (IRG), among others. The Iranian reaction indicates the possibility of opening the Golan front, where work is underway to build the necessary infrastructure. Preparations began after Syrian President #Bashar_al-Assad’s announcement that the response to Israeli attacks on #syria would come from the #Golan_Heights.

Cairo: 12 January, 2015
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) condemned today the arrest of Iranian child rights defender “Athena Vrkdana” on the day before yesterday, Saturday, January 10th, against the backdrop of publishing a video on “YouTube” in which she talks about her psychological and physical torture while she was jailed inside “Evin” [...]

During his visit to Cuba in 2012, former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, “Thankfully we are already witnessing that the capitalist system is in decay, on various stages it has come to a dead end — politically, economically and culturally.”

But the changes that have been taking place in Iran in the last few years seem to contradict this.

Despite slow mobile internet connections, high prices for imported – most of the time smuggled – technological products, and constant governmental censorship of the media, Iranians are frantically buying smartphones, tablets and flat screen TVs.

Shopping has became a near obsessive ritual for young people, and especially women, who have now turned to buying beauty products and high-end western brands to fill in the void of entertainment options and to “rebel“ against the array of restrictions they are subjected to.

Even if traditional Grand bazaars continue to be the favorite places to shop for regular Iranians, they now face competition from huge shopping malls, which were erected in the outskirts of major cities across the country. And these offer western-style hypermarkets, international brands and colourful gaming arcades to list just a few temptations.

In his recent opinion piece for Al Jazeera, Dott. Richard Javad Heydarian described Iran “as one of the most promising economies of the 21st century – and perhaps the next China”, a lion ready to awake.

Perhaps “the lion“ is getting ready – In the last few months we have witnessed improved relations between Iran and the West, while the upcoming negotiations for the lifting of the sanctions could pave the way for even more changes in the country and consequently also within the region.

October282014

An Iranian-born mathematician has become the first woman to win a prestigious Fields Medal, widely viewed as the Nobel Prize of mathematics.

Maryam Mirzakhani, a Harvard-educated mathematician and professor at Stanford University in California, was one of four winners announced by the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) at its conference in Seoul on Wednesday.

“This is a great honour. I will be happy if it encourages young female scientists and mathematicians,” Mirzakhani said in a press release from Stanford University where she is a professor.

At the time of the award, Wisconsin professor Jordan Ellenberg explained her research to a popular audience:

… [Her] work expertly blends dynamics with geometry. Among other things, she studies billiards. But now, in a move very characteristic of modern mathematics, it gets kind of meta: She considers not just one billiard table, but the universe of all possible billiard tables. And the kind of dynamics she studies doesn’t directly concern the motion of the billiards on the table, but instead a transformation of the billiard table itself, which is changing its shape in a rule-governed way; if you like, the table itself moves like a strange planet around the universe of all possible tables … This isn’t the kind of thing you do to win at pool, but it’s the kind of thing you do to win a Fields Medal. And it’s what you need to do in order to expose the dynamics at the heart of geometry; for there’s no question that they’re there. (wikipedia)

In 2007, when former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared during a Columbia University appearance, “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country,” many chuckled. It seemed to verify the average person’s preconceptions of the country as being primitive and socially backwards. Ahmadinejad was obviously wrong and his response spotlighted the fact that homophobia is a major issue in Iranian society. The event wasn’t meant to facilitate a productive discussion on the Islamic Republic’s many failings though, it was meant to reassure Columbia students and faculty of their own progressiveness. Ahmadinejad got a podium. The audience got a way to criticize his ideological beliefs.

Orientalist thinking like this obviously has consequences in how we discuss and view Iran. It isn’t just that we have trouble discussing the many problems that do exist in the country, such as human rights violations. We are also prevented from recognizing when Iran is doing things more or less right. Iran is actually far more progressive than many people realize on a number of issues. This is especially apparent when it comes to: organ donations, family planning, transgender surgery, drug rehabs, stem cell research, and HIV prevention.